It does not happen every day that in a cricket-crazy nation, a discussion on a cricket book barely gets a dozen people in the audience.
British author Nicholas Brookes and sports journalist Vijay Lokapally spoke for 57 minutes on the former’s debut book An Island’s Eleven: The Story of Sri Lankan Cricket in Delhi’s bustling Greater Kailash market before just 13 attendees. Brookes, holding his coffee mug and smiling throughout, diligently signed the books for whoever approached him.
The author spent over three years documenting the rise of cricket in Sri Lanka and interacted with legendary figures like Kumar Sangakkara, Muttiah Muralitharan, Mahela Jayawardene, and Duleep Mendis, among others, for writing the book. Published by Penguin Random House, the 578-page book chronicles the trajectory of Sri Lankan cricket from its roots in British colonialism to the World Cup victory in 1996, while also touching upon the geopolitical tensions in the country during that period.
“This is what Sri Lankan cricket is all about,” said Lokapally while holding the fat book in his hand. “You can always Google about the last 20 years of international cricket. But this book is about the gems you won’t find on the internet,” he added.
Filling the gaps
Before writing An Island’s Eleven, Brookes noted how there was little to no knowledge about Sri Lankan cricket, especially in the West. So he travelled to and lived across parts of Sri Lanka during his research and writing period. “It rather helped me stay unbiased and objective,” he said when an audience member asked him if his British nationality played a deterrent in writing the book. He added that in the past, the writing on Sri Lankan cricket was “coloured by a colonial gaze”.
An Island’s Eleven, which was released early this year, has been awarded the ‘Wisden Book of the Year’ and ‘MCC/cricket society Book of the Year’ titles.
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Sri Lanka’s school cricket culture
During the discussion, Brookes touched upon many aspects of Sri Lankan cricket — the cultural influence of Arjuna Ranatunga and Duleep Mendis, the commonalities with West Indies cricket, and the “most famous cheerleader of the world”, Percy Abeysekera. But what caught the spectators by surprise were the bits on the school cricket culture in the island nation.
“School cricket [in Sri Lanka] is equivalent to Indian Premier League [here],” said Brookes, who also stayed at a school campus during his research days in Sri Lanka. If a player performs well in school cricket, it is a ticket to the Under-19s and so on. “There was a Test match going on, and we learnt that an inter-school final was going on in the nearby stadium. Most of the people had gone to watch the school match while an international match was underway,” recalled Lokapally, who travelled to Sri Lanka multiple times back in the day to cover matches as a journalist.
As the session came to a close, Brookes remarked that Sri Lanka was “full of serendipity”. And an audience member quickly pointed out the origin of the word — ‘Serendip’, which was once used to identify the island nation. “My time there was full of moments of pure chance and luck,” the author said.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)